The bookstore, deastore.com, is an excellent source for recent books, popular paperbacks and cover images, mostly from Spain. Deastore is critical insofar as Amazon, our most-used source, has no Spanish or Latin American site, and few Spanish books. The libraries provide depth, including older books and–although all but one are from Spain itself–books from elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world.

Did you make it this far? The first 25 people to write to tim@librarything.com from a Spanish-language email address (.es, .mx, .ar, etc) will get a free membership. (If you don’t have one, write to us in Spanish.) And for the next few days, if you run a Spanish-language blog, we’ll send you five memberships—to blog or just to give to friends.

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

The non-English LibraryThings are flourishing. Every day we move closer to the dream of a truly international community of book lovers—contributing to the community even when we don’t speak the same language.* Good sources have been critical. We’re going release a flurry of Spanish ones on Monday, and hundreds more in many languages are forthcoming soon. Equally important has been all the effort members have put into the translations. Participation has been really astounding—202 members have made at least 20 edits each. A few languages have been shouldered by a single member—moriarty with Albanian or avitkauskas with Lithuanian—but most have been a group endeavor.

At least a dozen languages are ready for general use. It’s time to introduce some more!

By and large, the languages above correspond to languages we hope to support with one or more sources. In some cases, as Armenian, we haven’t found a source yet, but we’re hopeful. In some cases, as with Korean, we haven’t yet figured out how to make our source work, but we haven’t exhausted our options. As always, we need help finding open Z39.50 connections.

*Notably, LibraryThing’s work system means that when it comes to a book that crosses boundaries, everyone counts. That is, if Albanian readers of Heinlein also enjoy Alfred Bester, that will count when it comes time to generate recommendations. Speaking of which, we have a site-wide re-think of recommendations going on. So, expect bumps.

Friday, December 14th, 2007

We’ve had t-shirts available on our CafePress store for a while now, but we decided it was time to do it ourselves. Our stock came in this morning, in several huge boxes on my snowy doorstep, and we’ll be sending out the first shirts this afternoon (some people had pre-ordered).

Lindsey and I immediately picked one each and ran them through the wash so we could report on shrinkage—for what it’s worth, I’d say they shrink a little bit (they’re “preshrunk cotton”, but still), and that the medium is probably a little smaller then a typical men’s medium.

Shipping for Christmas. If you want a shirt by December 24th, then you need to order it shipped priority mail by Wednesday the 19th at 3pm EST. It’s probably too late for international shipping to make it in time (but hey, what says “Happy New Year” more than a t-shirt?)

LibraryThing memberships also make great gifts (or what about a CueCat stocking stuffer?).

Friday, December 14th, 2007

We’ve added two sources—the Hungarian National Library (Országos Széchényi Könyvtár) and the Hungarian National Shared Catalogue (Magyar Országos Közös Katalógus), a 17-library consortium which, if I understand correctly, includes the national library as well.*

We are looking forward to welcoming more Hungarians to LibraryThing. Our Hungarian-language site, hu.LibraryThing.com is at an advanced stage of translation. But we need your help. As we release each language, we realize how critical it is to build momentum. We’ve had success in Holland and Denmark because there were already active Dutch and Danish communities on LibraryThing, and because I knew a good many bloggers in both countries. So far, our Hungarian community has been small (114 members at last count) and I don’t know a single Hungarian blogger! So, if you want this to succeed, spread the word. Blog about it! Tell friends! Stand on a street corner!

Oh, and since you read down this far, how about a free account? The first 20 members who write to me from a .hu address** will get a free premium account. Just send me your member name to tim@librarything.com. If you run a blog in Hungarian, I’ll send you five more to give away to visitors.

*I’d love some clarification on this. We don’t have a bookstore yet—the way we’ve added Bol-Bruna for Dutch, and deastore.com for Italy. We’d love to add one. Update: Apparnetly, The National Library goes on siesta between 23:00-3:00 CET (GMT +1).**If you’re a native Hungarian speaker in Romania or elsewhere, write me and we’ll work it out.

The flag image above is by Flickr user antenae, and is licensed under the Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Her profile lists here as “24, female, Budapest, Hungary.” Does she want a free membership?

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

UPDATE: SantaThing is closed, and the Santa-ees have been picked. Check the SantaThing page to see who you’ve got, and start picking out books!

You have until noon, Eastern Standard Time (17:00 GMT) to sign up for SantaThing, Secret Santa for LibraryThing members. If you want to be part of it, sign up now! (If you want to know more about it, see the previous blog post.)

As of now there are 235 Santas. That’s a lot of participation!

Once we’ve closed it down, we’re going to throw everyone in a hat and pick the Santa-ees (Santa recipients?). We’re going to need to take some time to make sure all the entrants qualify—some non-US/UK/Canada people will have to be tossed—and have given us an address. We hope to turn it around quickly.

Once we’ve picked people, we’ll post comments on member’s profiles. Users who have comment-emailing on will get it by email too, but we can’t guarantee it doesn’t end up in your spam box.

You will have until 10pm Friday (Dec. 14) night to select the book or books. We’ll process things in the order they come in, as fast as Abby and I can handle it.

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

I have been cataloging my Italian books manually for months, but for the joy of all Italian readers, this is finally over! We’ve just added 12 new Italian sources!

It’s really no fun at all to enter book data field by field for hundreds of books, so I am sure all Italian Thingamabrarians will love the new sources! I’m personally really looking forward to cataloging books by scanning the ISBNs with my lovely CueCat!Anyway, this is a good news for all users: among the 12 new sources there’s the Vatican Library, which owns books in a number of languages, and the European University Institute Library in Florence, with a lot of books on social sciences and European studies in English.

Now, I know this is an English speaking blog, but I’m sure (well, I hope!) Tim and Abby wouldn’t mind some Italian … so, if you wanna read further and you’re not Italian, well, Babelfish is just one click away!

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

It’s been a while, but I hereby bring back the book pile contest. I want holiday bookpiles! Make of it what you will—they can be holiday themed (the picture to the right is the winner of last year’s Christmas book pile contest, by thelee — I’d love New Year’s piles, or Solstice, Kwanza, Hanukkah), books you received, books you’re giving, SantaThing books*—use your imagination!

The nitty gritty:

Post your photos to Flickr and tag them “LTholiday” (also tag them “LibraryThing”). If you make a new account it can take a few days for your photos to be publicly accessible, so post a URL to them in the comments here.

Monday, December 10th, 2007

UPDATE: We just (9pm) hit 100 Secret Santas, and a lot of interesting comments on them. Some users are confused about the money. The situation is this. When you sign up, you pay $25. When you get someone you pick out up to $20 worth of books, and tell us what they are—by ISBN presumably. We buy the gifts and pay the shipping. I suspect we’ll make or lose about $1 per Santa. This is hardly about the money.

The idea is simple. Pay $25. You play Santa to a random LibraryThing member, and find them up $20 worth of books, based on their library or a short description. Someone else does the same to you. LibraryThing orders the books and pays the shipping, so no addresses are exchanged and no members are stalked!

Now, this isn’t just for you. You can also go in for someone you know—a relative or a friend. Describe their library a bit and someone will find them the perfect present. And you can become a Santa as many times as you like. So, for example, I entered myself and my wife. Heck, I might outsource all my Christmas buying to the LibraryThing community!

Lastly, even if you don’t want to be a Santa, you can help by suggesting books for others.

Friday, 10pm Eastern. Submit gifts to LibraryThing. LibraryThing buys everything. According to Amazon, if it’s ordered before Tuesday it will make it by December 24.

Back story. I wanted to do this last year, but couldn’t get it out in time. This year I aimed low. You’ll notice it’s very basic. (You can make suggestions, but you can’t delete past suggestions, use touchstones, etc.) But, what the heck? It’s going to be gone in a week—it’s good enough!

Addendum: I haven’t even blogged it yet, and one user has already signed up. The “tastes” section was filled out as follows:

Friday, December 7th, 2007

A few days ago, I announced our December batch of Early Reviewer books. One of the books, The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes, immediately shot to the most requested spot. An hour in 200 people wanted a copy. As of right now, 1081 people have requested it—making it by far our most requested Early Reviewer book ever.* Unfortunately, we had only 20 copies to give.

So, I emailed the publisher, William Morrow, and asked if they’d be willing to part with more copies. They readily agreed, and tripled the quantity of books from 20 available copies to 60. So, forty more people will get to read and review The Somnambulist early. Thanks William Morrow!

On a semi-related note, we also have some cross over between Early Reviewers and our LibraryThing Author program. This month, Spellbinder Press is offering up The Sex Club by L. J. Sellers, one of our LibraryThing Authors! (L.J.’s LibraryThing profile). So after you request her book, go browse through the author’s library… We’ve had several other authors join (or while) their books were up on Early Reviewers. Check out:

*The number kept rising as I was drafting this, and understandably so. It looks fantastic, I plan on reading it myself when it comes out… As one member put it in Talk, “I suspect that’s because it’s the first thing to show up that has a decidedly fantastical bent to it. The sci-fi fans and fantasy fans groups on LT are two of the largest.”**[Tim’s note: If I were eligible, I’d go for The Boat and the Sea of Galilee, about the discovery, excavation and preservation of a first-century boat, something I know a little about from briefly working at the Institute for Nautical Archaeology in Bodrum, Turkey. Unfortunately, I’m not eligible. We need to start getting our own copies, though. Some day we’ll want to take a picture of all the books Early Reviewers has released, and we won’t be able.]

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

We’ve also added our first largely Hebrew-language source, theIsrael Union List, which includes the national library, all universities and many other public and private libraries. Unlike some of our sources, IUL records have the Hebrew or Arabic* scripts, not transliterations.

To our knowledge, this is the first time Hebrew-language book cataloging has been possible online. Certainly none of our 40+ competitors have Hebrew language sources—or generally any sources other than Amazon, but I digress. Of course, this is a small “market” (about 15 million speakers). But like some other communities we’ve gone after—Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Welsh—it’s a bookish one, and often multilingual to boot.

I’m particularly chuffed at how rapidly members’ have jumped in to translate the site. In less than day we’ve gone from completely untransalted (yellow text) to significantly so. Here are screen shots at 4pm yesterday and 11am today.

Lots of work remains, translating all LibraryThing’s “corners” and hammering out agreement on the terms—like “tag”—that trip every translation up. So far, much of the credit goes to one user, mirmir, behind whose cat are books in a number of languages. We hope LibraryThing can help her catalog her Hebrew—and Yiddish—books.

Work also remains on our side. Although the overall structure reverses well—to deal with Hebrew’s right-left directionality—some elements do not. Not all of this is easy for us to guess at, so we need your help on Talk. Check out the announcement and ongoing discussion in the בעברית LT in Hebrew group.

It’s also going to take some time to iron out all the cataloging issues. We’re confident that basic cataloging works, but we’ll need to be told about searching withing your catalog. As far as our “global level”—the level of works and combined authors—it’s going to take some time for us to knock the Latin-script bias out of our system. We are, however, strongly committed to doing that. After Hebrew, we plan to release Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. We’ve got to get this stuff right!

*For now, the IUL is our best Arabic language source. We have three others waiting in the wings—the American University of Cairo, Mubarak Public Library in Cairo and the library of the United Arab Emirates University. Unfortunately, we’re having search problems with all of them. We’re solving non-Latin search problems one by one, but, worse, these libraries appear to have relatively few records in Arabic script, rather than transliteration.

If you’re in the library world and interested in cataloging Arabic-language books we’d love your help finding libraries we can use. Unfortunately, we can’t use the web catalogs most libraries provide, but only libraries with a Z39.50 connection.